SEOUL， Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- Cash surplus held by South Korean households dropped in the second quarter as the households spent money to purchase home amid record-low interest rates， central bank data showed on Wednesday.

Cash surplus among households and non-profit organizations reached 13.7 trillion won (12.5 billion U.S. dollars) in the April-June period， down 43.6 percent from the previous three-month period， according to the Bank of Korea (BOK).

The cash surplus means a net cash holding， which is based on cash investment into deposits， insurance and stocks minus borrowed money. The case investment amounted to 50.3 trillion won， with the borrowed money among households reaching 36.6 trillion won.

The second-quarter drop in cash surplus indicated households borrowed money to purchase home rather than investing money into securities or deposits.

The country's household debts kept a record-breaking trend amid lowered borrowing costs. The BOK cut its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points in June to an all-time low of 1.25 percent， while the government eased regulations on mortgage financing.

Debts owed by households and non-profit organizations to financial institutions reached 1，479.3 trillion won (1.35 trillion U.S. dollars) as of end-June， up 2.5 percent from three months earlier. Enditem " MADRID cheap air jordan 11 , May 13 (Xinhua) ---- Economist Esther Duflo was named as the winner of the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences on Wednesday.

The 42--year--old Franco--American is the second of this year's award winners to be named. Last week, film director Francis Ford Coppola was denominated as the winner of the arts prize.

Duflo, who was nominated last year, was praised for ""her innovative and decisive contributions in the economy of development and the study of policies against poverty.""

She is currently a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology teaching the reduction of poverty and development economies. The jury decided that the ""results of her investigations have profoundly renewed the design of strategies in the fields of education, health, micro--finance and employment.""

Duflo is famous for her work cheap jordan 11 free shipping , ""Poor economics: A radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty,"" which was published in 2011.

The Princess of Asturias Awards are the most prestigious awards in Spain and carry a 50,000 euro cash prize (around 56,000 U.S. dollars) and a statue by artist Joan Miro. The awards are presented at a glamorous awards ceremony in the city of Oviedo in October.

The awards are handed out in eight different categories: arts, social sciences, sport cheap jordan 11 from china , concord, literature, international cooperation, technical and scientific research and communications and humanities. " China on Thursday sentenced the head of the country's most prolific tomb raiding gang to death with a two-year reprieve, a rare severe punishment which analysts hope will serve as a warning to the unbridled tomb raiding industry in China.

Ringleader Yao Yuzhong, from Chifeng in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region cheap jordan 11 womens , was found guilty of several offenses including tomb raiding, looting and selling stolen antiquities. His gang was highly organized, and would source fund, explore, loot and trade relics, said the Chaoyang City Intermediate People's Court of Northeast China's Liaoning Province on Thursday.

Altogether cheap jordan 11 mens , 22 gang members received prison terms of varying lengths. Three gang members received life sentences.

Under China's Criminal Law, tomb raiders can be sentenced up to over 10 years' imprisonment or to a life sentence for the most serious violations.

Among 32 artifacts retrieved by police, 16 were under grade-one State cultural protection. Another 77 relics still in the possession of the gang members were ordered returned.

The gang's arrest was one of the biggest busts of its kind supervised by the Ministry of Public Security since 1949. It was among 12 organized gangs implicated in illegal excavations at Niuheliang, a Neolithic site in northeastern Liaoning. Police apprehended 225 people and retrieved a total of 2,063 artifacts, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

This heavy punishment can serve as a deterrent to the unrestrained tomb raiding industry in China cheap real jordan 11 , which has grown into a mature business in the underground market, Ni Fangliu, a Nanjing-based expert on archeology and the history of tomb raiding, told the Global Times on Thursday.

Busier than archaeologists

Observers noted that more excavations may have been made by tomb raiders than official archaeologists in China, and that the antiquities recovered are usually sold either overseas for a better price or purchased by some private or even public museums.

Citing anonymous insiders, the Legal Weekly reported in 2010 that the number of tomb raiders in China may have reached 100 cheap jordan 11 wholesale ,000 in six provinces, including Hebei, Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Hunan and Gansu.

Tomb raiders are usually familiar with history to help them better locate the tombs cheap jordan 11 for sale , such as historical rituals or traditional feng shui, as emperors' tombs usually sit near mountains and rivers. Different dynasties had different funeral practices, Ni said.

"Tomb raiding gangs sometimes make better use of new technologies, such as directional explosion excavating equipment. They don't care that the ancient tombs are damaged, all they want are the relics to make a profit," Liu Yang cheap jordan 11 retro , a Beijing-based lawyer specializing in cultural relics, told the Global Times.

Liu, who has been working to retrieve Chinese relics overseas, estimated that a large proportion of the millions of relics in foreign countries could have originated from tomb raiding.